Archived Blog
Well a year and some after the event, I have finally finished editing the DVD of our wedding.
Although I will pretty much be automatically sending copies to first degree relatives and bridal party members, if anyone else out there would like a copy (so that you can once again laugh at my singing, the speaches, and the “you may kiss the bride” veil mishap) just drop me an email and I’ll send you out a copy.
Jack was running around the house this morning and he sounded like he was buzzing. I couldn’t figure it out. Every time he came close by I could swear that the buzzing got louder and sounded like it was coming from Jack. I was starting to get a little confused until he opened his mouth and the fly that had been in there flew out.
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For some time now I have been at the mercy of a cruel and mischevious sock fairy. I bought some new socks a few weeks back, wore them a couple of times, and then one of them just disappeared. After looking high and low I put it down to an act of sock fairy. Every couple of days I would define insanity by doing the same thing again and again (ie looking for said lost sock) and expecting a different outcome from the last time I looked in a given spot. I had pretty much given up when one day I walked into the spare room to find Jack playing with said previously missing sock in the middle of the floor. Now I suppose that it is conceivable that the sock fairy returned the sock (which goes against his previous modus operandi), but it seems to me that the more likely explaination is that Jack in fact IS the sock fairy. Especially given his previously commented on fascination with socks.
In a discussion I had with Simone later on we were theorising that perhaps the sock fairy that we know as an indistinct etherial entity is in fact just the collaborative efforts of a number of cats acting in the roll of sock fairy. They all have slightly overlaping teritories, so the sock fairy acts upon everyone, and can be in multiple places simultaneously.
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I don’t know if you all can remember the Simpsons episode where Marge gets a Pretzel making franchise. In her office in the garage she has this “inspirational” poster that she sticks up in front of her desk which shows a cat hainging onto a clothes line by it’s front paws and it’s head just looking out over the top of the line, with the phrase “Hang in there baby” across the bottom.
Now Jack has always been quite a jumper, and the other day I was reminded of Marge’s poster when jack tried to jump onto the top of the wardrobe in our bedroom. Now this wardrobe is probably 7 1/2 foot tall, and Jack was jumping from the top of the 3 foot high laundry basket. He jumped, got his paws onto the top, but didn’t have enough momentum to get the rest of him up, and there wasn’t enough traction for him to try and claw his way up the rest of the way (although he gave it a damn good try), so he just hung there for about 30 seconds. Eventually he decided to let go and drop back to the basket, and then slunk off to sit on the couch and ignore the indignity of me laughing at him. Sometimes he’s soooo cute.
Since starting work I have developed some interesting (semi) alcoholic tendancies.
Simone has commented on them.
My Mother has counselled me on not letting them get out of hand.
It’s all rather interesting.
Now I should probably clarify at this point that my drinking is still disconcertingly mundane (largely becuase I only have time to have a drink 2 or 3 evenings a week) and definitely within the safe range as defined by the department of health guidelines, but I still can’t help notice that between Simone and myself (OK, so it’s largely me), we do seem to have been making a pretty concerted dent in our liquor cabinet.
As a kid I never understood the appeal of a small whiskey after a hard day at work, or a little something before bed (as was the semi-regular habit of the father and mother respectively), but now I find myself following in my father’s footsteps of walking in the door, kissing my wife, loosening my tie (I’m not quite prosaic enough to call out “Honey, I’m home”) and heading for the amber relaxant (although I also quite like my Brandy, which sets me apart from my father who was a solely Whiskey man (although whiskey is probably still my drug of choice).
Now IÂ appreciate how wonderful it is for taking the edge off the world, and providing a cognitive separation between the discipline of work and the independance of home life.
As an aside I read a really fascinating article in New Scientist the other week about the possibilities for removing the negative effects (memory loss, nausea, addiction in alcoholics, etc) from Alcohol, by specifically blocking certain receptors in the brain that ethanol appears to act unfaovably on, while leaving other with pleasant effects (eg euphoria, social disinhibition) alone. It’s quite an interesting read. Unfortunately they make one point that in my mind guarantees to stop these effort from ever becoming reality – alcohol is regulated as a foodstuff, while anything that limited or modulated it’s effects would be regulated as a pharmaceutical with all the restrictions that go with that.
Since Simone has left for Nambour, Jack has taken to doing this rather cute thing when I arrive home. I’ll switch off the car, get out, and be greeted by a little “mroowww” and a furry little face poking itself around the corner of the fence, before he follows me inside.
It’s almost as if Jack’s decided that since Simone’s not around to ask me how my day was when I arrive home, he’ll take on the responsibility (and extract a few belly rubs while he’s at it).
After 14 months together we are having a trial separation.
Now before you all go getting startled, this is simply a stupid work thing.
Both being doctors on career paths, we knew and had discussed even before we got married the probability that at some point we would be sent to different places apart from one another for some period of time. It’s a sad reality, and it’s just a little irritating that it’s had to happen so soon.
Simone has finished her job doing paediatric surgery at the Mater, and is now set to spend the next 6 months doing general surgery at Nambour hospital, about 2 hours north of our house.
I’ve been scheming constantly for most of the last week, trying to figure out a last minute way out of it, since I frankly rather like having my girl around to come home to in the afternoons, do stuff with in the evenings, and snuggle with at night (and while Jack is admirably fluffy, friendly and cuddly, he isn’t quite up to the task of substitution).
It’s close enough that we can spend weekends together, and as it involves significantly less on call than the Paeds job did, we will hopefully be able to have good quality time on those weekends, but it still kinda sucks.
On weekdays however, since I no longer have a moderating female influence around, there will be frequent parties, poker nights and keg offs. Jack tells me he’s got a huge one in the works for wednesday already, and all his biker mates are coming, so if you don’t have other plans, drop in, bring some vodka, and don’t forget your pool cue for the inevitable end of party front lawn fight.
And when that’s done I’ve heard rumors about teddy organising jelly, handcuffs, and a limosine load of strippers – frankly I’m afraid to ask. Still, Jack and teddy do throw the most happening parties, so perhaps I shouldn’t question, and just go with the flow. 🙂
A few weeks back I did something rather stupid.
I was drinking a glass of cordial and put it down on my desk as I was playing on my computer.
Jack being his usual rumbunctious self jumped up onto the desk, and started sniffing my cordial with a view to drinking it (he likes human drinks, but thankfully hasn’t figured out how to get into the grog cupboard yet).
Simone trying to be helpful shifted the drink closer to me so that I could stop Jack from drinking it, and somewhere in the subsequent confusion Jack moved, I reacted, and the cordial spilled onto my computer’s keyboard.
Now in the past I had heard stories about people drying their keyboards and continuing without any problems, but that didn’t seem to work.
Then I recalled some-one who swore that they had washed their keyboard and hung it out to dry, and had it back working the next day. Obviously they didn’t have a laptop keyboard, because that didn’t work either.
In the end I just had to bite the bullet and buy a replacement keyboard.
Turned out to be the most expensive cup of cordial I’ve ever had.
Anyway, for everyone’s amusement, here is a pretty picture of my keyboard in the bathroom sink. Kids, don’t try this without asking your parents first.
It seems that Jack has (finally) realised that he is capable of jumping up onto the kitchen bench.
It has always somewhat amused me that while Jack has grown into quite a large cat he has, up until now, seemed to operated on the assumption that he simply wasn’t capable of jumping as high as the bench, so he simply didn’t try.
Then last night he was chasing a moth around the house and it flew above the bench and without thinking Jack followed it up. Then he kind of paused on the bench, looked back at the floor, and you could almost hear him think “Whoa… I never knew I could do that. That was cool.. and this could be useful.. hmmm”.
Then this afternoon when I got home Jack had obviously been practicing all day, because he made sure I was watching, and sauntered slowly over to the kitchen, paused, and jumped up onto the bench, as if to say “Aren’t I clever. Look what I can do”.
And he is clever, but perhaps we shouldn’t be encouraging him to be clever in the area of jumping onto benches.
When I was a chhild I had a book entitled “My cat likes to hide in boxes”. According to the book, the cat from france likes to sing and dance, but my cat likes to hide in boxes.
Now in reality, the cat from spain flies an aeroplane, and my cat (Jack) likes to jump into our laundry hamper whenever we leave the top up. The amusing thing about this is that he always does it in a fashion that causes the lid to drop shut, thus trapping himself inside. The hamper itself is a pretty light and airy wicker affair (a feature which is aided by Jack’s pre-existing love of using it as a scratching post), so Jack doesn’t seem terribly concerned by getting trapped it in, he just can’t manage to extricate himself.
Although I can’t be sure of what it might be yet, I’m sure there will come a time when my newly discovered “Better Cat Trap” will come in useful (perhaps when we need to take him to the vet), but in the interim it will just have to remain a source of sporadic amusement.
I have finally gotten my new computer. Yay. It’s so fast and shiny!!!
I picked it up friday afternoon, missed out on playing with it yesterday as I ended up doing an unexpected additional ED shift until 10pm, and plan on spending almost all today ensconsed infront of it’s softly glowing screen happily emersed in mindless tinkering.
I have to copy all my files and settings from my old computer onto my new computer, then copy all simone’s stuff from her computer onto my old one so that she can have it, and then set up Simone’s old computer for her parents to have. I don’t remember the last time I’ve gotten to do this much under the hood computer tinkering, and I certainly don’t remember when I last (if ever) set up 3 computers in one day.
I’m going to be like a pig in mud!!!
I have been at home sick today (which I think may actually be my first ever paid-to-be-unwell day, which is kind of momentous in it’s own little way) and have been being closely looked after.
Jack obviously loves having company around, and he hung around all day making sure that I paid him lots of attention (between blowing my nose of course).
When we were kids my mother used to refer to our cats Tabitha and Tigger as being Supervisory P’s (P for Puss) when they would come and watch us hanging out the washing, cooking dinner, and so on, and I think that Jack is developing similar habits, which I can’t say I’m displeased about :-).